A Very Old Youngster

On October 22, 1991, the Museum received a phone call from Jim McCubbin, Superintendent at the Milford Gypsum Quarry. The call was to advise that quarry worker Stanley McMullin had just unearthed “a tusk and some big teeth … would we like to have a look at what they found?” Would we?! This specimen was found 300 metres from McMullin’s initial discovery of an adult male mastodon and represents the earliest known juvenile mastodon in all of Canada, dating back approximately 80,000 years to the Quaternary Period. Even though only five per cent of his skeleton was found, we know that he was six years old by counting the rings on the tusk.